So you will never win anything with kids, will you? Sir Alex Ferguson resurrected his favourite Alan Hansen line as a defence of his policy of giving his young players much-needed experience in the Champions League and now the Carling Cup and was rewarded when an unlikely member of his junior cast came of age against Tottenham.

At 22 Darron Gibson is far from the youngest of Fergie's latest fledglings, yet he would not have been top of many people's list to repay his manager's faith after his wayward performance last week. Two stunning first-half goals and a tidy shift giving Wilson Palacios and Jermaine Jenas the runaround in midfield amounted to the quickest of turnarounds to give his manager fresh ammunition against the doubters. If Gabriel Obertan was supposed to show he has the potential to become the new Cristiano Ronaldo, he failed. Danny Welbeck had a quiet game and Federico Macheda did not start. It was left to Gibson, who played in last year's Carling Cup final against Spurs but attracted most of the flak last week, to present himself as the new Paul Scholes. Anyone disputing this claim should view not just the immaculate twin strikes from outside the box but the tackle for which he was booked at the end when he dived in on Aaron Lennon without any realistic chance of winning the ball.

"Sometimes you have bad days, today was a good day," Gibson said, modestly. "We tried not to let the criticism affect us. We just played our normal game." His captain attempted to introduce some perspective. "They are not kids, for a start," Gary Neville said. "They are experienced players and they are in the team by right. Some of the criticism is unfair at times but that's just playing for Manchester United. Lose a game and that's what happens."

This was never quite the reserve game that had been promised. Ferguson made a great show of sticking with the kids, arguing that all they needed was experience and a little more composure in front of goal, yet he added Dimitar Berbatov to ensure Manchester United would not be lacking in that department as well as to give him match time after injury. Harry Redknapp, for all his talk about preferring a top-four finish to a day out at Wembley, eventually rested only Niko Kranjcar and Benoît Assou-Ekotto from Saturday's starting line-up. Tom Huddlestone, Peter Crouch and Vedran Corluka were named as substitutes and incoming players of the calibre of Jenas, Robbie Keane and Gareth Bale hardly counted as fringe performers.

Perhaps for that reason Spurs initially looked the slicker going forward. Lennon on the left wing was soon causing problems for Neville and a neat move down the right, when Palacios won the ball and David Bentley carried it into the area, deserved a better finish than the shotfrom Jenas that ended halfway up the Stretford End.

Gibson had spent much of his last outing peppering his home crowd with the same sort of hit-and-hope efforts, yet after 16 minutes of Spurs doing most of the attacking Ferguson's law of patience and perseverance came into play. When Anderson's breakaway down the left was checked he squared the ball inside to see who was keeping up with play. Gibson was and, despite last week's blows to his confidence, he was only ever going to hit it. The ball stayed low and true and Heurelho Gomes was beaten from 25 yards.

Confidence breeds confidence and United never seemed likely to look back after that, even though a timely block by Ritchie de Laet was needed to prevent Jermain Defoe putting his side swiftly back on terms.

Gibson scored his second seven minutes before the interval with an even more impressive finish from a similar distance. This time Berbatov and Welbeck did the setting up, though the message was the same. United have found a successor to Scholes in the art of thumping goals home from just outside the "D". Put the ball into the right area and Gibson's right foot is a hammer.

Considering Spurs had virtually a full team on show, this performance was well below the standard of their recent league form. Redknapp had better be serious about that top-four finish.